Has David Pepper found a winning issue in his race against Mike DeWine? Share your comments below.

A down-ballot race grabs some big headlines as David Pepper steps up his fight against Mike DeWine. John Kasich starts a lottery. And Ed FitzGerald goes to Republican turf. All that and more in today’s Ohio Politics Roundup.

Not that long ago we told you about the challenge Democrat David Pepper faces in his bid to unseat Attorney General Mike DeWine. The Republican incumbent is well-known, generally well-liked and has decades of experience raising bundles of campaign cash.

Suddenly, though, the former Hamilton County commissioner is putting together a decent run.

Pepper on Friday reported raising more money than DeWine did in the second half of 2013. DeWine still has about $1 million more on hand. But Pepper was one of only two Democrats on the statewide ticket – auditor hopeful John Patrick Carney, who’s challenging Dave Yost, was the other – who outraised a GOP incumbent in the period.

Now Pepper is going after DeWine’s fundraising practices. He’s piggybacking off a report last month by the Dayton Daily News that found that firms seeking influence and work in the attorney general’s office contributed to DeWine, his son and the Ohio Republican Party.

Reporting by Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Jackie Borchardt has raised other questions. “Most contributions were made during the window to apply for panel membership and some were made on the same day firms submitted their applications,” she writes. “Generally, firms that did not contribute were not chosen for the competitive panel while those who did were awarded a seat on the panel and the ear of the attorney general.”

As Borchardt also notes, Pepper on Monday offered five proposals to root out what he is characterizing as a pay-to-play situation. That drew a critical response from DeWine, who asserts his office has followed the law and has been fully transparent.

“It’s interesting David Pepper – all the time while he was county commissioner and city councilman [in Cincinnati] – never decided that it was a problem, people giving contributions to him that contracted with the county and city,” DeWine, a former U.S. senator, told Borchardt. “It’s kind of interesting he's found religion all of a sudden.”

DeWine offered even harsher words to Alan Johnson of the Columbus Dispatch, calling Pepper “the most singularly unprepared person, in my knowledge, to run for attorney general. He’s never prosecuted a case and has not been in a courtroom that often.”

Notably, writes Jim Provance of the Toledo Blade, “Pepper did not call for a ban on such contributions from those who want to serve as special counsel on lucrative state cases.”

Still feeling lucky after that opening-drive safety that ruined your Super Bowl bets? How about a public lottery for tickets to Gov. John Kasich’s State of the State speech this month in Medina? Details here from Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Robert Higgs.

And in today’s installment of Kasich-for-president buzz, we have Jennifer Rubin, conservative blogger for the Washington Post. Rubin lists Kasich among the “flock of governors” she sees filling the Chris Christie void. Look past the part where she misidentifies the 2011 repeal of Senate Bill 5 as a right-to-work referendum and feast your eyes on this: “An official with a prominent donor group that met with [Kasich] says that he sounds like a governor pitching his record as presidential material.”

FitzGerald watch

Things were quiet on the Ed FitzGerald front Monday as he brought on a new communications team – non-Ohioans, Darrel Rowland of the Dispatch observes.

But the Cuyahoga County executive and Democratic candidate for governor spent some time last weekend in Butler County. Michael D. Pitman of the Journal-News notes FitzGerald stressed the importance of the area, rock-solid Republican, though it may be.

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